Seeing another LA landmark last week had me thinking about the years I’ve spent settling in, gradually transitioning from “newcomer” to “resident.” I thought I’d choose a couple of songs about Los Angeles as a tribute.
There’s definitely no shortage of them! Frank Black’s, Randy Newman’s, or anything from the La La Land soundtrack comes immediately to mind. But soon after we moved, I started noticing that people almost never write earnestly about the city. At best, there’s a begrudging acceptance: “this place kind of sucks, but I like it anyway.” And there’s always the dissonance of songs and movies calling out LA for cruelly crushing dreams of success, delivered by people who’ve achieved success (or otherwise I wouldn’t be hearing their songs or seeing their movies).
Out of all of them, the song I keep coming back to isn’t about Hollywood, or palm trees, or beaches and surfing, but “All I Wanna Do” by Sheryl Crow. It’s the one that most vibes with my impressions of Los Angeles (so far). Sure, part of that is simply because she starts the song by declaring “This is LA,” and repeatedly mentions Santa Monica Boulevard. But more than that, it captures my favorite thing about living here, which is day drinking.
No, wait. My days of hanging out in bars are years behind me now, and even back then, I wasn’t doing it during the day. I couldn’t have; I was always at work. But even during the period I did have a full-time job here, Los Angeles is the first place I’ve lived that felt like it recognized a distinction between your job and your life. This just feels like a place where, if someone asks, “What do you do?” they’re not asking about your employer, but about your interests.
I only learned recently that the song is an adaptation of the poem “Fun” by Wyn Cooper, which was written in 1984 and set no place in particular. That explains a lot. For one thing, it’s always been confounding to me how the same person who made “All I Wanna Do” also made “Soak Up The Sun,” which seemed like they couldn’t have been more different in lyrical sophistication. It also clears up the bit where Crow says a guy was “plain ugly to me,” which always felt unnecessarily rude.
The version that Crow and her co-writers recorded removes some of the lines, reworks the opening into a catchy chorus, and explicitly sets it in Los Angeles. And I can vividly imagine a bar across from a car wash. The city is full of the ugliest architecture against a backdrop of beautiful mountains and sunsets, with wildly disparate businesses all plopped randomly next to each other. There’s a strong likelihood that your favorite restaurant in the city will be in a depressing strip mall, right between a smoke shop and an orthodontist.
Also, it’s likely that a stranger will just strike up a conversation with you out of nowhere. I’ve had this happen more in LA than anywhere else I’ve lived, and I like the casual friendliness of it. Even if it rarely takes long before I’m reminded why I don’t like talking to strangers.1Which is mostly a me thing, although it’s sometimes a them thing. Something about seeing an old white man in a Disney or Star Wars T-shirt makes some people think I want to hear their opinions about how Kathleen Kennedy has ruined everything, or about how Disney sucks for being too inclusive of trans people.
And by making the poem more upbeat, the song has the side effect of removing the sense of arrogance and defensiveness I get from the poem. Changing the narrator to a young woman musician, especially one who looks like a pop star and/or model for a line of casual beach wear, makes it feel like she’s choosing to be in a bar at noon on a Tuesday. It’s not that she has no better options. It no longer feels like a guy alone in a bar on a weekday, trying to convince himself that he’s not like the worker drones across the street, or the out-of-place couple that just walked in; he’s got a freedom that all of these people lack.
Meanwhile, Crow doesn’t sound like she’s trying to convince herself of anything. It sounds like she really has figured it out. And the simple addition of “I’ve got a feeling I’m not the only one,” gives it a sense of camaraderie and inclusion. “They’re nothing like Billy and me” has a sense of serenity to it. We’re all doing our own thing, and we all basically want to enjoy life.
This is a city with weird rhythms, because so many people have weird jobs — seasonal, contract work, project hires, or just plain weird hours. There’s always traffic, and shops and stores and parks always have people around. There are millions and millions of people here all trying to make it, whatever “it” means to them, and we’re all having varying levels of success, but we’re more or less in it together.
Several years ago on social media, I read the quote “Los Angeles is shitty heaven, and New York is fun hell.” And having spent some time living in both, it feels accurate. I’m not going to claim that all the things that make people think LA is shitty aren’t true, but I do suspect that I just came here at exactly the right time in my life not to have to care that much about them. I’m married, I’m not interested in making it as a performer, and I don’t have to drive that much, so I mostly just get to enjoy the weather and laid-back vibes.
Honestly, it’s made me appreciate that there’s a meaningful distinction between “resignation” and “contentment.” I don’t need a place to be perfect to be perfectly content.
And even people who love the city can be disappointed by it. I was surprised when I first heard “Los Angeles” by HAIM, because if ever there were people qualified to be the city’s Brand Ambassadors, it’d be the Haim sisters. How could even they be over it? The song makes the city sound like flypaper, or the swamp of sadness. Even if you want to leave, you can’t.
But I say it’s a reassuring reminder for all of us that even if you’re rich and famous, and you have rich and famous friends, and you live near your family in a city where you’re free to walk down the street taking your clothes off, you can still find things that aren’t perfect. It’s a reminder to have gratitude for however close you are to heaven, even if it is a shitty one.
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